


the miles between

by towerofthegods



Category: McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: M/M, but its really not the focus of thsi fic oops, roadtrip au, somethin soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 06:58:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10714503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/towerofthegods/pseuds/towerofthegods
Summary: That’s how they are. Work-enforced relationship turned into friendship turned into calls in the middle of the night because‘Griffin, listen, I just saw… the funniest video’.-griffin measures maps of the united states, measures the space in his heart.





	the miles between

Griffin has grown accustomed to certain sorts of wonders.

The thing they don’t mention about spontaneous road trips is the -- well the stress, mainly, holy  _ shit _ did they have enough podcasts in the backlog? They had to, right? --, but there’s also the more natural aspect of sightseeing (or, ‘people-watching,’ he supposes), caught in slim spaces of time like pocket dimensions, crammed like receipts of memory in his brain. The nonsense. The most important parts. Both at the same time, this juxtaposition of  _ ‘this moment is a liveliness I will never feel again’  _ and  _ ‘if I keep doing this, I can live this way for the rest of my life’ _ \-- a chain of perfect happenstance.

He notices it first in the dim light of the morning; somewhere, the sun hangs, stooped like a bobbing orange peel, but here the music is fast and low, slipping out of the radio speakers as pleasant background noise. To his right, Nick doesn’t quite sleep, just goes between closed eyes to brief lapses of rapid blinking -- almost like morse code, but there is nothing Nick could want to communicate to Griffin that he hasn’t before, of that he is certain.

That’s how they are. Work-enforced relationship turned into friendship turned into calls in the middle of the night because  _ ‘Griffin, listen, I just saw… the funniest video’ _ . 

A soft puff of air falls from Nick’s mouth to the hand propping him up, and Griffin’s embarrassed to admit he struggles to keep his eyes facing forward. Still, he sees the long strip of empty road ahead and chances a glance, and his heart flutters in time with the music, fast and low, fast and low.

Nick is wearing the jacket --  _ the _ one, soft pink with the white bands, but in the rising dawn the hue has grown into a warm peach, has cast the lines of his face in a softening rose-gold. His hair has started to lose form, small tufts sticking out in a very ‘fuck-you-gravity!’ fashion, which Nick would undoubtedly smoothen if he were awake, so Griffin enjoys the misplaced hair with an odd sort of satisfaction, humming pleased as he drives past another exit sign.

“What’re you so happy about?” Nick mumbles drearily into his palm. On the radio, something slower kicks on -- a weird exception for Nick, when Griffin had grown so used to the electronic pop.

“Nothing, duder.” And it  _ is _ nothing, but still his stomach flutters warm, still his hands run slick against the rubber steering wheel, and he thinks,  _ oh. oh. oh. _ “Go back to sleep.”

 

-

 

The roadtrip had been Nick’s idea originally, he thinks, but the thing about…  _ them _ as a unit is that they’re great at riffing off of each other’s ideas (hence, y’know, the podcast and the video series), so although Nick starts it, Griffin expands and expands and now they are in Utah, maybe.

“And  _ you _ said there was nothing in Utah,  _ Griffin. _ ” Nick’s head goes limp against his shoulder, watching from under lowered lashes, coquettish in smile, tone,  _ everything _ . He twirls a bumper sticks between his fingers that says,  _ ‘My other car is Tornado!’ _ with a Tails insignia emblazoned on the side.

Griffin clicks his teeth, ineffectively hiding laughter that floats up from his belly. “Hm. You know, I  _ think _ I’m gonna stand by that.” He thumbs through the cheesy tourism postcards on the display and sees none of them, Nick’s figure in his peripheral still somehow the only thing in his view, and he watches as it straightens with purpose.

“We have to put this on the car.” Was his tone becoming less joking and more genuine? Sometimes it’s still hard for him to tell, but knowing Nick, he’s leaning towards a definite yes.

Finally dropping his hand and turning towards Nick, Griffin levels him an even stare. “Now, I think you just made a pretty good goof because that’s  _ my _ car, Nicolas.” Even off the air, there’s this creative tension, a push-and-pull of teasing and challenge, call and response, call and response.

“Think of it as a momento for when we have to say our goodbyes.” 

And Griffin’s stomach suddenly hollows out, a queasy feeling like gravel in his mouth because  _ yes _ , of course he knew they’d be parting ways eventually; they live in separate states and they have jobs and lives, but when even the center console between them while driving seems like an impossible distance, the thousand miles is unquantifiable. Realization rattles around his brain like a lead countdown, and there is a window of opportunity closing he only just realized is there. 

It starts small, no penultimate boss battle possible without the beginning level one, without even loading the game; Griffin thinks,  _ I have a crush on Nick _ , and it’s an unwinding tension, and he flexes his fingers once, twice.

“Oh, well, that’s cute.” Contemplative, but was the choice ever a choice? “I pick our next locale, and I’ll let you put your dumb crush on my car bumper.”

“Yes,” Nick hisses excitedly, and he drags Griffin towards the counter, already digging his wallet out of his back pocket.

(And hey, it doesn’t even look too bad against his car, pinned pretty beside Nick smiling wide and profound.)

 

-

 

As it turns out, Griffin’s brilliant idea of going to some amazing arcade is -- unsurprisingly -- a mistake.

See, because Griffin knows Nick, there are certain things he has come to terms with as Nick Robinson Universal Truths ™ , like holding weird, cryptic streams where he does nothing but eat a sandwich, or casually wearing cat ears sometimes without ever really acknowledging it, or -- hey! That he’s really,  _ really _ good at rhythm games.

DDR is, predictably, no exception.

Under the flashing arcade lights, Nick’s hair has distorted into pinks, blues, oranges, and the flush riding his cheeks looks a soft magenta beneath the low-lighting. His shirt rides up an impossible inch, bunched up and folded like layered cake batter, and it reminds Griffin of the console all over again -- insignificant distance turned to a vast gap, the leap  _ right there _ but still too far, always too far. He ditched the jacket prior to the last round but still sometime after Griffin had opted out of trying pathetically to keep up with him, and now it lays across the machine like a statement of possession; Griffin itches to grab it, to sling it around himself despite the heat of the building.

“I told you, Griffin, you can go find something more your style if you want,” Nick says, and his breathing is still labored, temples slick with sweat and hair messily pushed back with the help of the natural adhesive.  Griffin tells himself it’s gross, and he convinces no one.

“Nah, dude, ‘s cool. You said you’d be done in a few rounds anyway, right?” He thinks,  _ what’s the point without you? _ And then thinks, hey, that’s a little gay even for him.

Nick shrugs and turns back, and Griffin thinks he’s dropped it until he snags his jacket and leaps off the platform. “Hey, man, are you okay? You’ve seemed… a little weird the past few days.” He tugs Griffin’s sleeve emphatically, and Griffin stares at the few centimeters where his hand meets skin.

Blinking, he looks back up at Nick to see concern and watches his bangs float a few inches from his face where he has tilted his head curiously. “Ah, no, I’m good, just tired from all this travelling, y’know!” He flaps a hand very un-casually, and he’s blushing, and oh  _ shit _ he’s started to sweat under the attention, but he hopes it’s masked convincingly enough under the muggy arcade.

And then, another wonder: along with the sleeping Nick and the flushed, painted Nick and the goofy, squeaking-laugh Nick, Griffin watches as his mouth turn a suspicious ‘w’ shape, eyes lowered like half-windowed curtains.

“You sure it’s nothing?” And did he just step  _ closer, _ what the fuck, is this attempted murder? “You know you don’t have to  _ lie _ to me, right Griffin?” His fingers brush lower, running so lightly along Griffin’s arm that it feels like a phantom sensation, and Griffin has to keep himself from ascending to a whole other plane of existence.

Starting to laugh -- because, hey, it’s a valid nervous reflex, and it’s pretty much his reflex for, um, everything -- Griffin edges backwards to find himself flush against an arcade machine, and it pings and flashes violently behind him, clear and bright. “Yeah, man, must be the final nail in the coffin of my decaying body.”

Nick quirks a mouth corner, coy grin flickering for a second, before he seems to come to a decision -- so fast it seems glitch-like, as if his facial expression had found some corrupted code and snapped to normal and back so fast Griffin is left feeling unsure what even qualified as normal with him, anymore.

“Hey, Griffin?”

“Yeah?”

“I think I’m going to kiss you now.”

And then: distance closed. A GPS showing directions to a location he is already standing in. His teeth catch on Nick’s bottom lip, and they kiss goofily, stunned expressions turned to giggling and smiling against each other’s mouths, and it’s so true to themselves it feels like it loops back around to foreign territory again.

His heart thrums -- fast and low --, and Nick’s pulse flickers to life beneath the thumbpad rubbing his wrist -- call and response --, and Griffin thinks _ , if I keep doing this, I can live this way for the rest of my life,  _ and he is certain, certain, certain.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> yo it's ross! not gonna bother linking my rpf tumblr because most of u have that already and its not worth the anons but !! thank u for reading my shame fic now i can finally rest. inspired by one of the good, good shipboy creators who had the idea of a roadtrip AU (lmk if u want me to credit u and i'll add ur tumblr!) and i was inspired to take a very vague spin on it.
> 
> comments are always endlessly appreciated, especially for something with a small base like this! thanks <3


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